The "Family Guy" viral mishap: Blame Canada!

It all started on Sunday when someone posted a clip from "Family Guy" to YouTube -- an occurrence, I soon discovered, that happens about 100 times a day. This one was a 28-second clip (below) where a character drops the F bomb.  The poster leaves this note:

I couldnt believe it when i heard it the f word on family guy. Someones in trouble

Monday morning, Lew Irwin's "Studio Briefing" sent the alert to thousands of readers, who (since only a fraction of them actually watch or TiVo the Fox network) took it as gospel: Some said "f----ing" on the "Family Guy." Paul Harris and I even yakked about it for a couple of minutes on Monday.

But it's not true.  As alert TV Barn posters who did watch Fox that night noted, the scene was bleeped. In the U.S. of A., that is.

The first tipoff that something was screwy was the fact, as Paul and I noted, that "Family Guy" is not a live broadcast. In fact, like just about all cartoons not named "South Park," it's produced months in advance. The chance of getting anything controversial on the air without standards and practices not knowing would seem to be nil.

Then, another tipoff.  The guy who posted it to YouTube is, judging from his other videos, deep into DVD-ripping technology. Could it be the guy never saw the broadcast, but somehow got his hands on a DVD screener submitted to Fox with the curse word included?

Or was this just an elaborate stunt posed by Seth MacFarlane and his merry pranksters, whose contempt for the FCC is well known?  (Last season, an episode of "American Dad" was virtually calculated to push the edge of the envelope for so-called broadcast "decency." It was more violent than a Peckinpah film.)

UPDATE: We have our answer in the comments!

Comments

[Jim]

Here's what happened:

In the U.S., the "offending" word was bleeped. When the episode aired in Canada, however, it aired uncensored.

The mysterious people who put TV shows up for download captured the show from Canadian television (anyone who has watched it will note the Canadian rating logo in the top-left corner of the video over the opening title sequence).

For the record, I am a Canadian. I watched the show as it aired, and thought I had heard the f-bomb. I downloaded the show (which is legal here), knowing that they are often captured from Canadian airwaves, and sure enough, I was right.

[SaveFarris]

Nice to see Mr. McFarlane spending his time coming up with these cute little stunts instead of spending time writing entertaining and cohesive scripts. It's like they're trying to prove the South Park guys right.

[ChicagoJen]

Muchas gracias for the Cooksie recommendation. They were a lot of fun and I will definitely be on the lookout for more.

Love this TV blog and it is always great to get music recommendations in addition to Insider TV stuff.

[wiseass2147]

You can also also tell it's Canadian, or at least not American, by the conspicuous absence of the Fox "bug" in the lower right hand corner, which is present during every broadcast of every show on fox.

[Ryan]

I could have sworn that if it aired, it was at a very low volume on my Global feed. How very interesting.

[ML]

Typical American response - blame Canadians for a show that originated in the US!

ML

[Ed Dravecky III]

This was just a case of a Canadian broadcaster choosing not to censor the same word that an American broadcaster was forced to for fear of massive fines from the FCC. Most clued-in Americans love Canadian broadcasters since they do wonderful things like air "Studio 60" one day ahead of NBC or show various sci-fi series months ahead of any US broadcast. Or, we would if we downloaded shows from the internet which, of course, we do not.

[Brian (Free Advice)]

FAKE.

I watched the show here in Canada on Sunday, and I'm sure I DIDN'T heard the swear word.

I've just checked via a video media monitoring service, and I can confirm there was no F-bomb in Canada (I checked Toronto, Calgary and Atlantic markets) - the word was totally bleeped out (with silence) on the Global network.

i.e. audio was "these animals are so ... funny".

Also, Global has a translucent white bug in the bottom right corner of its broadcasts. There is no Global bug on the YouTube clip.

IMHO, Canadian stations typically don't get "uncensored" versions of first-run American TV shows (i.e. airing the same night). The American providers don't really have any incentive to edit together a custom second version, especially in that time frame.

And it is not legal to downloaded there any more than here.